


Thirty-Five

by WhereMyMoosesAt



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst, Asshole parents, Casual Sex, Friendship, Gen, Loneliness, M/M, Pining, Sad Ending, Substance Abuse, Time Skips, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 11:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11873307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhereMyMoosesAt/pseuds/WhereMyMoosesAt
Summary: "Don't you want someone? Like, don't you want someone that wants to kiss you even when they don't want anything else? Or someone that wants to take you home to meet their parents?"Frank falls in love with his best friend.





	Thirty-Five

Frank is 16 the first time he kisses a boy. The boy is just as drunk as he is, bleary-eyed and sort of unsteady on his feet and they fumble against one another in the backyard of some house party, touching each other through sweat-soaked clothing the way that the movies have shown them how. It's kind of terrible and Frank is pretty sure first kisses are supposed to be romantic, but this suffices, because his heart is racing and his hands are shaking and he doesn't catch the boy's name but it doesn't really matter, because Frank doesn't see him again.  
  
The first time he drops to his knees for someone is about the same, as is the first time he lets someone fuck him. He's gaining a bit of a track record by the time he's 17, and he thinks he might feel ashamed if he gave a shit, but people make assumptions anyway, and it's much more punk rock to not give a shit, so he does what he wants and deals with his friends calling him a slut because they throw the word around like a term of endearment and the release is nice and even if he's not kissed anyone since that faceless boy from the backyard and he's never been touched while sober, he doesn't feel like he's missing out on anything.  
  
He meets another boy in the backyard of a house party. This one is entirely too drunk in a pitiful sort of way, slumped with his shoulder against a tree and dry heaving uselessly. Frank smokes a cigarette and watches him for a while, and only when the boy drops gracelessly onto his back in the grass does he move, coming to stand over the boy.  
  
"Where are your friends?" The boy blinks up at Frank, his eyes shiny and unfocused, and Frank tries again, "did you come here with friends?"  
  
"I don't know." The boy's voice is hoarse, and Frank figures that it's probably from the retching, which is even more pitiful, and something about this boy reminds Frank of a sick animal, and he doesn't really know what to do, but he doesn't want to leave him alone. "Can I hit that?" His eyes have drifted to the cigarette dangling in Frank's fingers, and Frank sinks into a crouch next to the boy's head.  
  
"Do you smoke?"  
  
The boy shakes his head.  
  
"You'll probably throw up."  
  
The boy's face splits into a bright smile and he holds his hand out towards Frank limply, palm down. Frank isn't sure if he wants to shake his hand or if he wants the cigarette, so he gives him both; he shakes his hand, awkwardly from this angle, gently like the white-haired women that he remembers from when he'd go to church with his mom, and then hands him his cigarette.  
"Frank."  
  
The boy nods seriously, his hazel eyes hovering lazily on Frank’s face. "Gerard."  
  
Gerard takes a drag from the cigarette, starts to cough, and as promised, he finally throws up.

  


  
By the time Frank is 18, Gerard is a regular fixture in his life. His friends are Gerard's friends, and they like him, the quiet, quirky boy that Frank found in the backyard of a party after everyone else had forgotten him. They joke a bit at first, that Frank found a stray, and he'd defensive, but Gerard doesn't seem to mind, and eventually he's just there. Gerard drinks with them and smokes with them and even when he learns how Frank is, he doesn't join in on the ribbing that seems present in every conversation he has with the rest of their friends. Gerard never calls him a slut, even as a term of endearment, because everything out of his mouth is almost painfully kind and constructive and it's nice to have someone that doesn't make him feel like he should be someone better.  
  
Frank doesn't invite people to his house, but he invites Gerard, and he feels stripped bare the first time the boy stands in his room, taking it all in under the fading daylight filtering in through cracked blinds. Gerard touches his things, gently and almost reverently. His fingers trace his walls, practically plastered with posters that suddenly make Frank feel too young, the books lining his shelves, the neck of his guitar. He turns to Frank, his smile small but sincere, and simply says "it's so you," and Frank has never felt more proud of his bedroom and less alone in his house.  
  
Even when Frank begins to spend more time alone with Gerard and less time in groups, he can't bring himself to feel lonely because Gerard has a way of filling up every room he's in. He’s passionate about a lot of things, and it’s contagious, and Frank finds that almost every time they’re together his jaw aches from the strain of grinning constantly. Gerard wears his every emotion clearly on his face and he always seems genuinely happy to be in Frank’s company, and Frank isn’t sure he’ll ever get over the fact that someone like Gerard could be okay with spending so much of his time just being with someone like Frank.  
  
Gerard draws, a sketchbook always close by and his slender fingers constantly kissed red and blue and black from ink, and he resists with mumbled explanations that he's not very good when Frank asks to see his work, but he eventually caves, and they lay side-by-side on Frank's bed, a lukewarm can of cheap beer sandwiched in between them, while he pores over a battered sketchbook. It's not weird, and the silence between them is comfortable because Frank feels like he's really meeting Gerard for the first time, and he realizes he wants everything that this boy will give him, and he'll read every word he writes and look at every doodle he creates if he'll allow it. He recognizes himself in the sketches sometimes, and the recognition explodes warmly through his stomach and chest. When he's done flipping through the sketchbook, he brings Gerard his own notebook, full of lyrics that sometimes have melodies to match and sometimes don't, words that no one else has ever read, and Gerard reads in silence, a cigarette dangling from his fingers, and all Frank can think about is how far they've come and how much further he wants them to go.  
  
They spend most evenings like that, drinking and smoking and talking, and Frank feels good. They talk about life and the future and they discuss starting a band, but Gerard can’t sing and play guitar at the same time and Frank is an okay guitarist but there are plenty of okay guitarists, but they discuss band names for a solid hour before their suggestions start to suffer under the weight of inebriation and they collapse into giggles. Frank buries his face in Gerard's shoulder and laughs until he can't breathe, and for the first time in years, the concepts of forever and the future don't seem quite as heavy.  
  
The first time Gerard meets Frank's mother, on one of the rare days that she isn't working both jobs and she's actually home, they take to each other instantly. She pulls him down into a hug, because she's small like Frank, and tells him that he's welcome over anytime he likes. They don't talk about Gerard's home life, not when they're sober, not in daylight, and Frank wonders if it's a mother's intuition that can just look at a boy's eyes and see how long it's been since anyone has touched him with anything resembling affection. Gerard hugs her back, smiling broadly, and it's strange, because the kitchen feels too dark and too small to contain the three of them when it's always just been Frank and his mother, but the house seems to stretch to accommodate them, the ghosts in the walls shifting to make room for something hopeful and light, and it's nice. Something in Frank wishes he could hold Gerard like that, but he shoves the thought away because it's weird, and because he doesn't possess a mother's intuition, and because he's sure Gerard would hug him if he needed to, and instead tries to focus on how nice it all is.

  


  
Frank is 19 the first time Gerard tells him that he's his best friend, the best friend he's ever had, and it isn't a revelation, but it feels like it is. They're sitting against the wall in Frank's room, shoulder-to-shoulder like they always are, and Gerard's words feel the way Frank imagines his first kiss should have, because his heart is still racing but this time, he's sure that this is what he was made for, that all roads have led to this, that if a jet engine fell in through his ceiling and killed him now, it would be okay because he's done what he was meant to. He laces his fingers through Gerard's, and he smiles, and he doesn't say it back because he doesn't have to, because Gerard knows.  
  
There's a lot that Gerard doesn't know, and Frank thinks it's better this way, because love isn't always so easily defined and if he says too much he'll spoil it, so he stays silent, his best friend's hand in his own, and tries to commit this moment to memory.  
  
  
  
Frank is 20 when he moves into his own apartment, still in the same city, and Gerard is the only person he would consider living with, but Gerard insists he has to stay at home, so Frank moves into a studio that barely feels bigger than his matchbox bedroom had been. It feels barren until Gerard comes over for the first time, and only when he's been there for a few hours does it start to feel like home. Frank's friends from high school have become more like acquaintances so there's no such thing as a housewarming party, but Frank thinks he prefers it that way, with his space holding only traces of himself and his best friend.  
  
He doesn't bring men to his apartment for the same reason, because he's afraid of tainting their space, and it's a strange thought, one he doesn't voice to Gerard, but he's sure Gerard would appreciate it.  
  
The future comes up again, because it always does, because they both have shitty jobs and no prospects to speak of, and Gerard's head is resting on Frank's shoulder when he admits that he's scared of ending up alone.  
  
"You won't end up alone. I won't let you."  
  
Gerard's eyes find his from behind his dark hair, his gaze soft and unfocused, and Frank is reminded of the night in the backyard, and it feels like a lifetime ago, and Gerard smiles, a sad little thing, and asks "is this the part where we make a pact to get married if we're both still single at 30?"  
  
"35, dude, I still plan on being a slut when I’m 30."  
  
And Gerard laughs, but it doesn't touch his eyes, and Frank realizes it's been awhile since anyone has called him that, himself included, and Gerard looks like he might protest, but he doesn't. "35," he says instead, turning his head and burrowing further into Frank's bony shoulder, and he can't be comfortable, but he looks happy enough. "I'll hold you to that."  
  
  
  
Frank is 22 when his best friend meets a girl, the first girl he's ever shown interest in since they've been friends. She's beautiful and kind, soft in the same way Gerard is, and Frank hates her. The first time he meets her, he leaves the bar where they'd all met up with a headache born from the effort required to smile and make polite conversation. He knows he should be supportive of Gerard and his happiness, but jealousy sits leaden in his gut and he manages to convince himself that it's just fear of losing his best friend to someone that Gerard could convince himself is better for him. She probably is, and Frank fucking hates her, hates the way she holds her cigarette, hates the way her nose crinkles when she laughs, hates the way that alcohol loosens her lips and limbs and she drapes herself around Gerard like he's a coat rack, a piece of furniture, something that she can claim.  
  
He lets a stranger fuck him for the first time in months that night, his flushed face pressed against the cool tile of the bathroom wall, and he doesn't make a sound. He feels hollow, and if Gerard notices anything when Frank returns to their table, he doesn't say so, but the look he gives him when the girl isn't looking says enough.  
  
  
  
"Have you ever been in love?" Gerard's question comes out of nowhere, and Frank snorts, the sound bleeding derision.  
  
"No."  
  
Their shoulders are pressed together because there's no way to avoid it on Frank's shitty twin mattress, Frank’s fingers resting against Gerard’s slim wrist, and the ashtray sitting right below his breastbone becomes a harder target to hit the more they drink.  He can feel Gerard's eyes on him, his head turned to the side, and Frank stares at the ring of gray around the ashtray, forming a broken circle against the faded black of his t-shirt.  
  
"Like a bullseye," Gerard notes, following his gaze, and Frank snorts again, taking another drag from his cigarette. "Aren't you lonely?"  
  
"I don't have time to be lonely," Frank replies, and it's not a lie, not exactly, because best friends don't lie to each other, and it's the safest answer he can come up with.  
  
"Don't you want someone?" Gerard's gaze has returned to him, and it's steady in his peripherals, but he watches the twin trails of smoke curling towards the yellowed ceiling instead of meeting it. Gerard's waiting for an answer that Frank won't give, so he presses forward. "Like, don't you want someone that wants to kiss you even when they don't want to fuck? Or someone that wants to take you home to meet their parents?"  
  
Frank's never met Gerard's parents, and Gerard's never invited him over because he says his house is a mess. He means it needs to be cleaned, but Frank isn't stupid, he knows that Gerard's parents hate each other, and they might hate him as well, the little boy with his mother's nose and his father's eyes that grew up to be such a big fucking disappointment just by being. No amount of clutter or dust can compete with the words that have seeped into the walls when his parents think that their sons are asleep. Frank doesn't tell Gerard that he hasn't kissed anyone, not since that boy in the backyard, since before Gerard became the new boy in the backyard, the one he never sullied, and Gerard doesn't tell Frank that he's completely miserable at home but won't leave his younger brother alone, but Frank knows, because he knows Gerard.  
  
"I worry about you," Gerard admits, when the silence between them starts to feel heavy, and Frank's chest aches, right below the bullseye, because Gerard is so genuine and so good and he wants to tell him not to worry, that he's fine, but best friends don't lie to each other, so Frank just snorts again, a quick bark of laughter this time, and neither of them feel the need to comment on the fact that it sounds a whole hell of a lot more like a sob than a laugh.  
  
  
  
The girl becomes Gerard's girlfriend, and the word alone turns Frank's stomach. They can't interact without her name being brought up, and Frank isn't sure whose fault it is, but he doesn't see Gerard as much anymore, and he can't decide if it's better this way or worse. His apartment feels barren without the other man, and he stares into the empty space and aches for the evenings spent fighting off the silence, and he longs for 35. He smokes and drinks twice as much, his offering to the studio to fill Gerard's place, trying to keep the universe from noticing that a black hole is opening beside him where someone else should be. He starts bringing strangers home to drink his beer and smoke his cigarettes and fill the silence with curling smoke and strange voices and rushed sex and he's starting to feel Gerard fade. He never lets them stay the night, but he wakes up one morning and realizes his pillows smell like sweat and a shampoo that isn't his and he spends hours dry heaving in his empty bathtub, and he thinks of the boy slumped against the tree in the backyard, forgotten and alone, and he wishes someone would help him throw up and purge the sickness roiling in his stomach.  
  
The next time Gerard comes over, he's practically vibrating with nervous energy, and when he shows Frank the ring, it's suddenly obvious why.  
  
"What do you think?"  
  
Frank wants to say that he hates it, that he hates her, that he hates himself, but he forces himself to smile and reassure Gerard that she'll love it, and when Gerard pulls him in for a tight hug and tells him that he's his best friend, he almost wishes that Gerard would call him out and ask him how he's doing. But he doesn't, and it's fine, and when he leaves, Frank stares at the closed door for a long time, his cigarette burning his fingers, and he aches for 35.  
  
  
  
When Gerard shows up at his apartment in the middle of the night a few days later, Frank immediately knows something is wrong. Gerard has been drinking, a lot more than usual, and his eyes are red and his hands are shaking when he grabs Frank and pulls him into a hug that's entirely too tight and frantic.  
  
"Did you drive here?" he asks, and it's wrong, because Frank isn't the adult in these situations, and Gerard isn't this irresponsible, but Gerard just breathes into his neck, unsteady and hot.  
  
"She broke up with me." Frank hates himself for the momentary relief the words bring, and he's trying to pull Gerard's arms off of him so he can look at him, but his friend's grip is too tight, and Frank realizes that Gerard needs this, and he stops fighting. "Why wasn't I good enough?"  
  
The question sparks anger for some reason, anger at Gerard and the girl and at himself, because Gerard has only ever been more than enough, and he tells the other man as much. When Gerard pulls free, the look in his eyes is foreign.  
  
"It hurts," he says, his hand clenching at the fabric of Frank's shirt, right where his bullseye would be. "I don't want to hurt."  
  
Frank can relate, because all he's done for what feels like forever is hurt, but he doesn't know how to help, and Gerard is pushing him backwards, and he doesn't realize what's going on until the backs of his knees bump his couch and he's flat on his ass and Gerard is moving unsteadily but unrelentingly into his lap. "I need you to fix it," he says, peering down at Frank through red eyes, "please make it not hurt." Gerard dips his head to press his lips against the pulse hammering at Frank's throat, and this situation is surreal and fucked up, and Frank is painfully sober, and this isn't at all how he imagined this.  
  
"Gerard," he says, his voice cracking, because this is too much, and he should stop this, but he can’t will himself to move, "I can't do this."  
  
Gerard pulls back to look at him, and the look in his eyes is haunting, twisting in Frank's stomach. "Why don't you want me?" he asks, and he's the boy in the backyard all over again, retching and forgotten and alone. "Don't you love me?"  
  
Tears are prickling in Frank's eyes, and his stomach is sick, and he brings his trembling hands up to rest on Gerard's neck. "You don't know what you're asking for."  
  
"Please," Gerard breathes, and Frank breaks, and when Gerard surges down to kiss him, his lips taste like beer and the wrong cigarettes and Frank almost wants to cry, because no one has kissed him in years and he's never been sober when kissed and he's polluting the boy he meant to protect, and as his hands fumble with the buttons on Gerard's shirt, he almost manages to convince himself that he's helping Gerard, not driving the final nail into both of their coffins.  
  
When he wakes up the next morning, he's sweating, his back pressed against the wall and his face in Gerard's chest. He pulls back, careful not to wake the other man, and finds that he's already awake, watching Frank through lidded eyes. They stare at each other, the silence stretching on, and the enormity of what he's done stretches out in his mind until it's an ocean and he's in a sinking lifeboat. Gerard's grown up, the softness of 17 giving way to the sharper lines of 23, but his eyes are the same as the ones that Frank looked into 6 years prior, and he really is drowning.  
  
"Frank," Gerard begins, and the fragile thing in the air between them shatters, and there's sympathy in his eyes, and Frank closes his own, because the last thing he wants is pity. "I-"  
  
"We don't have to talk about it." He seals the conversation tightly, and Gerard doesn't protest, and he's not sure if he's grateful or not, but he already knows and he doesn't want to hear Gerard say aloud everything Frank has known from the moment he went and fell in love with his best friend.  
  
"Thank you." Gerard gets up slowly, and Frank keeps his eyes squeezed shut while the other man gets dressed. He doesn't open them until the edge of his bed is dipping and he looks up to see Gerard looking down at him, and he looks so tired and sad and so old and Frank wants to ask him where the boy in the backyard went, what happened to them, and what happened to 35. "You're my best friend. You know that?" Frank doesn't say anything, because there's nothing he can say, and he doesn't trust himself to try, and when Gerard leans down, Frank is almost able to convince himself that he's finally going to be kissed in a scenario where both parties are sober, but then Gerard presses his forehead briefly against Frank's. He whispers an apology and then he's gone, and the ocean in Frank is too much, and he finally lets himself drown.  
  
  
  
As promised, they don't talk about it. Gerard never sets foot back in that apartment, and Frank moves to a different, slightly less shitty apartment soon after. It doesn't house the ghost of their friendship, and it's painful to not see traces of him etched into every surface, but not as painful as the previous one had been, so it suffices.  
  
Gerard tells Frank when he decides to finally go to art school, and that he's decided to stop drinking, and Frank forces himself to smile, forces himself to be proud when his best friend moves two hours away with his younger brother safely in tow to start his future, finally free of the town that held so many unpleasant memories, and all Frank can hope is that he's not counted amongst them.  
  
Frank doesn't stop drinking, doesn't stop fucking strangers, doesn't stop trying to do something about the longing that seems permanently etched into his ribcage. He still hasn't kissed anyone, and he can still feel Gerard on his lips, drunk and hurting and scared for the future.  
  
Frank's 25 when he receives an invitation to Gerard's wedding, to a different woman than the one he'd loved years before, and Frank hates her too, because he can, and the stationary is mocking him, raking painfully against old wounds, and Frank throws it away, not even bothering to reply to decline it.  
  
Gerard calls him, a week before the wedding, and leaves him a voicemail when Frank doesn't answer. He starts to listen to it, but he only gets as far as "I miss you so fucking much" before he deletes it. He doesn’t call him back, and he deletes Gerard's number to ensure that he can't. His mom texts and asks if he's going to the wedding, and he doesn't text her back, either. There's no place in Gerard's life for him, not since that night, maybe not for years before, maybe not ever, and the realization is fucking painful.  
  
On the day of the wedding, he spends the day in bed, drinking in his best friend's honor, to the boy who never would have ended up alone, and tries to smoke away the bad taste left behind by saying goodbye to 35, watching a single trail of smoke coil towards the ceiling.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what to say about this. The idea came to me in the middle of the night and I wanted to get it out. It could have been less sad and longer, but in my head it was always going to be kind of sad.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
